


Not Wear Ragged

by Estirose



Series: Always in Service [3]
Category: Kamen Rider OOO
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-22 10:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/pseuds/Estirose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shingo has mixed feelings about Ankh's plans, mid-45. Very slightly AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Wear Ragged

**Author's Note:**

> "Constant use will not wear ragged the fabric of friendship." - Dorthy Parker.
> 
> Shingo's been quite cooperative with Ankh so far, but given the recent developments, I have to wonder if he will be content to forever be in the backseat of his own body. Nevertheless, I think that he's sympathetic to Ankh, even if he doesn't always/often agree with the Greeed inhabiting his form, he realizes that some of the worst people are in most need of friends.

Shingo shuddered mentally as Ankh walked down the pathway. It was surprising, how even he could be affected by the Greeed's schemes and plans.

Ankh had always taken care not to damage Shingo's body, knowing that it was key to his own survival. Shingo had the sense that he would have preferred a body without a mind, but the Greeed really had no choice in the matter, or at least that's what Shingo had figured out. Besides, Ankh put up with him because he rarely tried to interrupt the Greeed, and he tried to help out by quietly trying to influence him and be there for him.

He suspected that Ankh would never let him go now that he was incomplete. He wasn't looking forward to that, would do anything to make Ankh complete again, to a point that Ankh didn't need him anymore. Ankh had been becoming more human, less Greed, in the time he'd held onto Shingo's body. Shingo could only see that as a good thing.

It was the medals that concerned him, the two yellow medals that were in his body. He knew from his time as Ankh's host and from what happened to Hino Eiji what the effects of medal insertion were on a human. That humans with medals in their bodies became Greeeds, eventually, though one could fight it for a while. As Ankh had pointed out, Eiji was starting to show signs of Greeed-like behavior himself. And Shingo didn't want to be like that. He didn't want to become like Dr. Maki or like Eiji himself.

Was it selfish, to not want to become a Greeed? He'd been Ankh's host, knew how much the other valued human feelings and perceptions, things he'd never experienced before taking over Shingo's body. He'd given a selfish entity a chance to become human by allowing him to feel human things. And in return, Ankh had plunged the medals into his host's body, to hold him hostage in a way that nobody had ever expected.

As long as he was host to Ankh, he was safe. Ankh would prevent his body from changing, but once Ankh was gone, Shingo would change unless he found a way to get the medals out of him. Maybe it was infinitely easier with two than the five Eiji and Doctor Maki carried, and it helped that Shingo himself didn't want the change and couldn't transform. But he could feel the medals inside him, humming, frustrated in their attempts to change Izumi Shingo into a new Greeed, held at bay by Ankh's will.

And yet he knew that Ankh had deliberately done this, made him a cross between a dead man's switch and a ticking time bomb, just so that Eiji would leave Ankh alone. Eiji was compassionate, and Ankh, despite everything, was still his friend.

Shingo would have reminded Ankh of that, but he doubted Ankh wanted to listen at the moment. Not that he ever really did, but some moments were better than others. Shingo half-hoped that Ankh would succeed at his mad plan to come alive, to be so much what he desired to be. He just wasn't that keen on losing his body forever to it, and he didn't know how much of him would bleed into Ankh's final merger.

But some part of him wanted to be there for Hina, too, and that part of him was aware of how helpless he was, how far Ankh would go to be real, too. Shingo didn't easily admit that he was afraid, but some part of him didn't want to lose himself in the merger, to be there as Shingo for Hina.

It was a tough choice, and he wasn't even sure it was his to make. He wanted everyone involved in this safe, Ankh and Hina and Eiji. He wanted Ankh to be the real person he wanted to be, to have a chance to live and Eiji to be human and to be there for Hina again. He suspected that to choose one was to neglect the others, to let the other choices die. But wasn't that what choices were, the death of destinies and fates?

And somewhere in there, he was upset too. Upset for Ankh and for Mezool, Uva and Gamel and Kazari. Upset with Ankh at Dr. Maki's words, and the idea that the Greeed weren't alive, weren't real, weren't worth mourning. Sure, he had very little like for Kazari, the Greeed who he might end up replacing, but they had lived and plotted and loved and been together, lived life in their own way. No matter how evil they were, they were life. Dr. Maki had been wrong.

Shingo suspected the doctor was deliberately wrong about a bunch of things, but his belief that the Greed themselves were nothing was wrong, period. Ankh and the others would find fulfillment not in completion of their cores, but by getting given a chance to change, to experience, to become human like Ankh was becoming. He had a vision of becoming a Greeed, of trying to get the Greeeds to be what they could be, to let them feel and love and be everything they desired. Of being there for Mezool and Gamel, of helping Uva and Ankh out.

Of course, that would probably never happen. Ankh would never let him go, unless Eiji killed him. And it would be hard to get the Greeeds to trust him, with everything that Dr. Maki had done and how treacherous Cazari had been. And he himself didn't really want to have his senses dulled like the Greed did. It had been terrible enough to know what Eiji was going through; he didn't think he really wanted to go through it himself, losing one sense at a time until he'd forgotten about warm grass and delicious rice.

He wished he could be of more help to Ankh and to everybody else. To protect everybody, to make things all right. To save the world through influencing Ankh. But he reminded himself that he'd done his part, and would do whatever he needed to do in the future. He had to be patient. Brave. Supportive. Scared. There.

And for Ankh, for Eiji and Hina, and for the world and the Greeeds, he would.


End file.
